"I find that I am bored with anything I understand," Karen Uhlenbeck once said. That sentiment is part of why she won what many call the Nobel of mathematics Tuesday.

by Bill ChappellMar 19, 20193 minutes

"I find that I am bored with anything I understand," Karen Uhlenbeck once said - and that sense of curiosity is part of why she won the prestigious Abel Prize, from the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Uhlenbeck, an influential mathematician who was for decades a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and who has sought to encourage women to study mathematics, has become the first woman to win the Abel Prize — often called the Nobel Prize of math.